Prologue: Those reading Schlock Mercenary from the beginning might think they can just skip this bit, saying to themselves "oh, I know what already happened. I just want to see the picture. Why is this text here, anyway?" They'd be wrong. You see, although this prologue will make an obvious summary of previous events (the Toughs are in the Ghanj-Rho system, where they just finished finding new eyes for Sergeant Schlock, holding a funeral for Corporal Obscromble, and installing Rod the Bradicor into power, all in the space of about three weeks), it also provides some new information.

Not that any of it matters all that much. After all, most of you don't care that Rod has given a committee of five sophonts (a metisoid, a unioc, a big, pinkish bug-thing, and two amorphs) control of the Orbital Lance for continued defense of the station, as per the legislation that Lieutenant Massey Reynstein, J.D., drove through the council, nor are you concerned about the fact that the last of Lady Emily has been unceremoniously passed into the ecosystem outside of Tobir. You might be interested to know that very little time has passed since the funeral (hours, not days), but that kind of information may make it difficult for the small-minded to segment this new story from the old one.

Fortunately, readers of Schlock Mercenary are not small-minded. They're not entirely normal, but they're smart, smart people who are probably quite glad they read this entire prologue.